Pif Paf: creative computer science

PifPafPresentation7min.mov from Al Ma on Vimeo.

 When we decided that the school uniform needed refreshing we could have adopted two different strategies:

1. decide on an off-the-shelf solution from known suppliers and not worry too much about the design or the ethical or environmental impact of the production process
2. establish a student led design group to work with a qualified designer experienced in ethical fashion to create a bespoke solution

Obviously, we decided on the second strategy and we were lucky enough to work with the fabulous Alina Moat, a recent graduate from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion. She came highly recommended by the equally fabulous Professor Helen Storey with whom we have been on a number of creative learning adventures. The entire project is documented on this blog.

Alina recently visited our new building to see the students wearing her designs. It was lovely to see how pleased she was with the end result of the project and we are equally proud of the fact that our students are wearing clothes that are genuinely sustainable and distinct. Alina's real reason for visiting however was to tell us about her latest design project and to ask whether we would be interested in collaborating with her. Entitled Pif Paf, the project aims to teach young people how to use programming software by employing a number of creative learning strategies.The video above describes succinctly how a playful combination of physical, emotional and intellectual enquiry results in students mastering complex processes.

We are hopeful that we can support the next phase of the project, testing the model with a class of Year 7 students over several months as part of our Tallis Lab curriculum. We are very excited about the potential of working alongside Alina again on such an innovative solution to the issue of rebooting computer science education in the UK.

i, Scientist

I am delighted that we will be taking part in this year's version of Beau Lotto's brilliant i, Scientist project at the Science Museum. Check out this film to get a glimpse of the great learning in store for our dedicated team of explorers.

Beau Lotto

Mr Hawes and I had the pleasure of visiting Beau Lotto at his lab in the Science Museum earlier this week. He is doing some amazing research about the science of perception and is very interested in working with students and members of staff at Tallis next academic year on a very exciting project. We need a small but beautifully formed group who will collaborate over six days with the young people and adults from other schools to create their own experiment. When the experiment has been designed they will work with a storyteller to turn their ideas into a narrative. I'll post more news about this in the very near future!

Science Club on YouTube

The Science Club at Tallis has got its own YouTube Channel. Mr Davids has purchased a cool camera that takes video at hundreds of frames per second. This one of a cymbal crash is my favourite although the one of Mr Davids getting a slap, to demonstrate the elasticity of the human face, comes a close second. Photography and science are closely related and some of these videos remind me of Harold Edgerton's famous series of high speed flash photographs. Now that the new school is about to be built on the back field, we thought we'd try to record the whole process using a special camera mounted on the roof. The idea is to take a couple of pictures of the site every day throughout the build. We can then make a time lapse film of the construction. I suppose we should also think about doing the same thing when the old school is demolished.